Carrie Rachel Grace Brownstein[2] (born September 27, 1974) is an American musician, writer, and actress. She first came to prominence as a member of the band Excuse 17, before forming the critically acclaimed trio Sleater-Kinney. During a long hiatus for Sleater-Kinney she formed the group Wild Flag.

During the same period of inactivity for Sleater-Kinney Brownstein wrote and appeared in a series of comedy sketches with Fred Armisen which was then developed into Emmy and Peabody Award-winning TV series Portlandia.

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Brownstein was born in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of Jewish parents.[3] She was raised in Redmond, Washington.[4] Her mother was a homemaker and a teacher and her father was a corporate lawyer; her parents divorced when she was 14, and she was raised by her father.[5] Brownstein has a younger sister.

Brownstein began playing guitar at 15, and received lessons from Jeremy Enigk.[8] She later said: "He lived in the neighborhood next to mine, so I would just walk my guitar over to his house. He showed me a couple of open chords and I just took it from there. I'd gone through so many phases as a kid with my interests that my parents put their foot down with guitar. So [the instrument] ended up being the [first] thing that I had to save up my own money for – and maybe that was the whole reason that I actually stuck with it."[8]

After both Excuse 17 and Heavens to Betsy split up, Sleater-Kinney became Brownstein and Tucker's main focus. They recorded their first self-titled album during a trip to Australia in early 1994, where the couple were celebrating Tucker's graduation from Evergreen[10] (Brownstein still had three years of college left). It was released the following spring. They recorded and toured with different drummers, until Janet Weiss joined the band in 1996. Following their eponymous debut, they released six more studio albums before going on indefinite hiatus in 2006. In a 2012 interview with DIY magazine, Brownstein said that Sleater-Kinney still plans to play in the future.[11] On October 20, 2014, Brownstein announced on Twitter that Sleater-Kinney will be releasing a new album, No Cities to Love, on January 20, 2015, and will tour in early 2015. At the same time the announcement was made, they released the video for the first single from the album. The single, "Bury Our Friends", was also made available as a free MP3 download.[12]

In September 2010, Brownstein revealed her latest project was the band Wild Flag, with Janet Weiss, Mary Timony, and Rebecca Cole, formerly of The Minders; according to Brownstein, about a year earlier "I started to need music again, and so I called on my friends and we joined as a band. Chemistry cannot be manufactured or forced, so Wild Flag was not a sure thing, it was a 'maybe, a 'possibility.' But after a handful of practice sessions, spread out over a period of months, I think we all realized that we could be greater than the sum of our parts."[14][dated info] They released a self-titled album in September 2011.[15]

"Music has always been my constant, my salvation. It's cliché to write that, but it's true. From dancing around to Michael Jackson and Madonna as a kid to having my mind blown by the first sounds of punk and indie rock, to getting to play my own songs and have people listen, music is what got me through. Over the years, music put a weapon in my hand and words in my mouth it backed me up and shielded me, it shook me and scared me and showed me the way; music opened me up to living and being and feeling."

From November 2007 to May 2010, Brownstein wrote a blog for NPR Music called "Monitor Mix";[23] she returned for a final blog post in October, thanking her blog readers and declaring the blog "officially conclud[ed]."[16]

In March 2009, Brownstein contracted to write a book to "describe the dramatically changing dynamic between music fan and performer, from the birth of the iPod and the death of the record store to the emergence of the "you be the star" culture of American Idol and the ensuing dilution of rock mystique";[24] The book, called The Sound of Where You Are,[25] is to be published by Ecco/HarperCollins.[16]

Brownstein was outed as bisexual to her family and the world by Spin when she was 21 years old. The article discussed the fact that she had dated bandmate Corin Tucker in the beginning of Sleater-Kinney (the song "One More Hour" is about their breakup).[34] After the article was out, she said: "I hadn't seen the article, and I got a phone call. My dad called me and was like, 'The Spin article's out. Um, do you want to let me know what's going on?' The ground was pulled out from underneath me... my dad did not know that Corin and I had ever dated, or that I even dated girls."

In 2006, The New York Times described Brownstein as "openly gay".[35] In a November 2010 interview for Willamette Week, she laid to rest questions about her sexual identity, stating that she definitely identifies as bisexual. She says, "It’s weird, because no one’s actually ever asked me. People just always assume, like, you’re this or that. It’s like, ‘OK. I’m bisexual. Just ask.’”[36]

Since working together on ThunderAnt, Brownstein and Fred Armisen developed what Brownstein has called "one of the most intimate, functional, romantic, but nonsexual relationships [they have] ever had."[37] According to Armisen, their relationship is "all of the things that I've ever wanted, you know, aside from like the physical stuff, but the intimacy that I have with her is like no other."[38] Brownstein currently lives in Portland, Oregon.[1]